Probabilistic assessment of port operation downtimes under climate change

Abstract

Port infrastructure is strategic for local, regional and global economic growth and development. They play a crucial role as transportation hubs and gateways for the vast majority of goods transported around the world, linking local and national supply chains to global markets. Moreover, demands on ports are likely to grow in the light of expected increases in world freight volumes, due to shipping efficiency and its smaller carbon footprint compared to other modes of transport (Becker et al., 2012). Other economic activities, including industry, tourism and fisheries, also flourish around seaports. Thus, any significant disruption in the logistics of seaports can have significant economic implications (Chhetri et al., 2014). Service disruptions alone can cause considerable economic losses in the order of billions of dollars and may have important second-order consequences, not only for regional economies and the quality of life of those who depend directly on the port's functionality, but also for the operation of global supply-chains (Becker et al., 2013). Due to the type of businesses held around them, seaports are located in one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change impacts, i.e. coastal areas susceptible to sea level rise and increased storm intensity and/or mouths of rivers susceptible to flooding (Becker et al., 2012). Despite this, attention to climate-related impacts in ports is relatively recent (McEvoy et al., 2013). The first international benchmark studies consisted of an analysis of the most vulnerable to climate change port cities in 2070 (Nicholls et al., 2008) based on population and asset exposure to water levels defined as one hundred year storm surge, and a worldwide survey sent to Port Authorities to detect sectorial perceptions regarding port risks due to climate change (Becker et al., 2012), respectively. The first step in the evaluation of climate change impacts on ports involves reviewing all potential impacts and identifying the main marine variables and the databases available where this information is included (Sánchez

Port disruptions due to natural disasters: Insights into port and logistics resilience

“…port-level, regional-level, national-level). Port-level approaches either use hydrodynamic or weather-simulating models in combination with operational thresholds of ports (Camus et al, 2019;Esteban et al, 2016;Sierra et al, 2017;Zhang and Lam, 2015) or a simulation model of the port functioning in order to estimate the economic losses of downtime for a port (Cao and Lam, 2019;Zhang and Lam, 2016). The abovementioned studies rely on a relationship between the event (e.g.…”

“…10 day disruptions occurs once every x years). Moreover, most of the aforementioned studies only consider single port disruptions (Camus et al, 2019;Cao and Lam, 2019;Pant et al, 2015;Park et al, 2008;Rose et al, 2018;Rose and Wei, 2013;Thekdi and Santos, 2016;Zhang and Lam, 2016). However, a single versus multiple port disruption scenario might affect the results in terms of losses and system response.…”

Visualising the Uncertainty Cascade in Multi-Ensemble Probabilistic Coastal Erosion Projections

“…We use this subset of conditions as boundary conditions to the SWAN model (Booij et al, 1999) nesting three grids to achieve a spatial resolution of 20 m in the area of San Lorenzo Beach. During the simulations, wave amplification due to non-linear interactions between waves and projected sea level is accounted for as in Camus et al (2019). For the reconstruction of the nearshore wave time series, we use a multidimensional interpolation method based on radial basis functions (RBF).…”

Addressing the challenges of climate change risks and adaptation in coastal areas: A review

“…Priority needs encompass the development of appropriate design standards and specified decision criteria to help to integrate climate information into port and harbour planning and management (McEvoy and Mullett, 2013). Since CC is expected to alter the operability and stability of coastal structures beyond the baseline conditions assumed for design (Camus et al, 2017(Camus et al, , 2018, more comprehensive methodologies that allow considering mean and extreme climate conditions and including the associated uncertainty are required. This focus reinforces the need for modelling the operability and stability of coastal structures over time, for example, by considering non-stationary reliability and resilience, and analysing potential influencing factors such as changes in load intensity, and the contribution of the quality of periodic maintenance to their conservation and degradation (Li et al, 2015).…”